The information: Greenwood, a US neobank geared towards Black and Latino communities, and co-founded by rapper and entrepreneur Killer Mike, is making a monetary training push ahead of its anticipated early 2022 launch. The neobank’s initiative is hosted by Greenwood Studio, a content advertising and marketing store that may assist podcasts, video collection, and a enterprise listing.Greenwood Studio has an inaugural lineup of 5 authentic works, together with:
Teaming up with podcast Earn Your Leisure, co-hosted by educator Troy Millings and monetary advisor Rashad Bilal
Partnering with Tanya Sam and iHeartMedia on a brand new monetary literacy podcast, Money Moves
A documentary on Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Greenwood District (Black Wall Street) and the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre
Partnering with Sahirenys Pierce on a personal-finance podcast, Ask Me Anything About Money
A digital listing for Black and Latino companies referred to as GreenBook.
More on this: Greenwood has launched the studio after opting in June to postpone the neobank’s public debut resulting from excessive demand—it presently counts over 500,000 sign-ups on its waitlist. Greenwood’s focused communities make up bigger proportions of unbanked and underbanked individuals than their inhabitants shares. Black and Latino Americans face disproportionate monetary obstacles, per information cited by Fast Company, together with Black loan-applicants dealing with an 80% increased rejection fee than their white counterparts.Greenwood’s celebrity-backed advertising and marketing technique follows comparable initiatives from different US banking gamers.
In February, neobank Varo introduced a partnership with NBA star Russell Westbrook—who additionally led its $63 million funding spherical—which entails creating an impression platform to help underserved communities.
In 2019, NBA star LeBron James partnered with Chase on a podcast geared toward destigmatizing speaking about funds.
The alternative: Greenwood Studio helps the neobank construct up anticipation and model familiarity in the course of the lead-up to its launch, retaining those that have signed up engaged whereas they wait and bolstering its customer-acquisition drive. Operating a content-marketing arm additionally helps Greenwood to distinguish itself from different area of interest neobanks which might be looking for to construct Black and Latino buyer bases.
A Greenwood competitor, First Boulevard—which introduced in a $5 million seed spherical in March—provides merchandise starting from a Black enterprise market to no-fee debit playing cards.
Fortú caters to Latinos and emerged from stealth mode in May, providing a financial savings account and a remittances cope with fintech Wise.
